Terrorized by terror - Space closes

Pat Black patoitextiles at gmail.com
Fri Mar 30 11:44:35 PDT 2007


I don't disagree with anything said on the subject of fear up to now
but for me it the discussion is lacking some components and I am not
sure myself what they are.  Hopefully in my response I will unpack
them.
 >  "The culture of fear is like a genie that has been let out of its
 >    bottle. It acquires a life of its own -- and can become demoralizing.
>Another way of talking about all of this is that when the Genie of fear is
>let out of the bottle, space closes. People burrow in and seek the lowest
>common denominator of our humanity. This is not to suggest that no dangers
>exist, but the words of Franklin Roosevelt ring very clear here, "We have
>nothing to fear but fear itself." And fear does a fantastic job of shutting
>down our life space. The reactions that follow are fairly predictable.
>Simple tasks become monumental chores, and small irritations send people off
>the deep end. And our life space becomes smaller and smaller - until there
i>s scarcely room to breath.

I think this is absolutely true and in addition to demoralizing it
becomes self fulfilling.  As we have experiences that are defined as
threats we become more hardwired to define experiences as potential
threats.  Each new tragedy no matter how small tunes the brain
physiology to expect more threats and to define experiences as
threats.  I do think the current political establishment exploits and
manipulates brain physiology and intentional fosters a climate of fear
but there is something bigger and older culturally going on here.  I
think they exploit but they did not create the climate of fear.

I don't agree with the article that we were a confident people in
World War II and now we are fear ridden.  We were a manipulated people
then and a propaganda machine was used then to help people turn their
fear into action by joining up or working for the war machine,
planting victory gardens etc.  If that suited the intention of the war
machine now they would be using the same propaganda.  No, I think
arrogance and xenophobia and entitlement drove people then as now.
Politicians and entrepreneurs stand to gain a lot of power and wealth
from large violent conflicts and they invest in them.  That was true
in World War II as it is now.  The Rockefeller's made a fortune
selling jet fuel to the Nazis.  There is plenty of booty being made
now.

My feeling is that we are not just afraid of terror.  As a people we
are afraid of everything.  As a young person growing up in a Christian
community I was taught at the very least to be suspicious and I don't
think it is a stretch to say that I was taught to fear non-Christians
as they could be representatives of Satan.  I was taught to fear my
own sexuality and my gender as a source for potential evil in the
world.  These are fundamental to my identity as a human being and the
infrastructure on which fear can be cultivated.  I am not in the
minority in my experience and I don't think it is a particularly
American problem.  I see it manifest all over the world and in all
kinds of communities.  When we identify with people based on certain
attributes that we have defined as superior for whatever the reason we
have a substrate that can foster fear and create a climate of
"othering" which puts other communities at risk for being terrorized.

All that said, what it the issue then.  What is the antidote to
globalized fear.  Fear is a good thing in that it is a survival
mechanism that is effective.  I think it is important not to demonize
fear.  We need it.  What we don't want is to have that mechanism
triggered and manipulated by other people.  So my question again is
what should the response to fear be?  I think the best response is
reasoned action.  How do we reach a reasoned action?  I think most of
us do it through inquiry.  So for me that is the answer to globalized
fear is questions and lots of them.  Questions leading us to more
questions leading us to descriptions of sensory information, leading
to more questions and descriptions and to some actions after many many
questions and descriptions.

This ability to be present with questions leading to more questions is
for me how open space is connected and is a process that is the
antidote to fear.  The experience in open space fosters a comfort
ability and confidence with questions that often don't have answers
and that never have a single answer.  We become comfortable describing
experience or issue without judgement uncovering the questions our
descriptions reveal.  We become comfortable to the many descriptions
that are related to a single question and we become practiced at
viewing questions from multiple perspectives.  We become practiced at
asking questions in response to fear not just reacting.  We become
experienced responding to questions by developing plans for action
that respond to questions not to adrenaline floods.  Our identities
become defined by our ability to develop questions and descriptions
and understanding of multiple perspectives instead of by defining
ourselves by how we are different and our immutable descriptions of
our different worlds.   At least, this is what I see the potential of
open space is.

>Doubtless lots of things can and must be done - but in this community I
>think we have a special role, opportunity, and I would guess, responsibility
>to do what we know how to do - Open Space. It is tempting to think of
>massive open spaces for the "powers" of this world.

 I think this is true.  We are all at different places in our fluidity
with inquiry.  To step out of sensory experience and reflect is the
opening of space.  To the brain there is no abstract memory of
experience.  What the brain stores is the experience itself.  Our
physiological response to experience is the same as if the experience
is happening at the moment.  There can be no epiphany moment here
stepping outside the experience, stepping into open space requires
practice.

>Everytime we open space, and especially when we do that around some
>common, mundane, everyday issue for even a few people - those people have an
>opportunity to take a deep breath, to push back the crowding walls of fear,
>to open up their life space. I am reminded of a very small Open Space I did
>in The Middle East. At the end a young Palestinian woman came up to me with
>tears in her eyes, and said, "You have reborned my hope." The English may
>have been a little fractured, but the moment was profound.

And so I would have to agree totally that open space has the greatest
potential for power in our living practice.  Every time I take that
breath in my own life space is opened and my relationship with myself,
with the experience, with fear itself is transformed.  It is these
moments in our living that the world is transformed.  Open space
events of course work their change as well but for me open space
events are more like a ritual for living, the real substantive change
happens in the personal experience.  Every time I take that breath I
change every other relationship that I have or could have.  Not only
is hope reborned but the world itself because it can never organize in
quite the same way again.

In this climate of "othering" and evangelism and this discussion of
fear, I am reminded that diabolic and symbolic come from the same root
word.  "dia" to pull apart the body and "sym" to put together the
body.  I love the image of Open space as the symbol that pulls the
bodies together into one.

I thank you for asking the question Harrison and inviting breath.
Pat Black






















































































































-- 
CHRIS CORRIGAN
Facilitation - Training
Open Space Technology

Weblog: http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot
Site: http://www.chriscorrigan.com

Principal, Harvest Moon Consultants, Ltd.
http://www.harvestmoonconsultants.com * *
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